Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Functional Operation Of Workers’ Compensation Covid Presumptions, Michael C. Duff
The Functional Operation Of Workers’ Compensation Covid Presumptions, Michael C. Duff
All Faculty Scholarship
During 2020, a number of U.S. states implemented workers' compensation COVID-19 presumptions. This short informal paper defines and explains legal presumptions generally and then discusses the workers' compensation presumptions. The paper contends that at this juncture it is not clear whether states intended to enact "Thayer-Wigmore" or "Morgan" presumptions; but if they operate as Thayer-Wigmore presumptions they will not do workers' compensation claimants much good in the context of non-jury proceedings presided over by administrative law judges.
Compensation, Commodification, And Disablement: How Law Has Dehumanized Laboring Bodies And Excluded Nonlaboring Humans, Karen M. Tani
Compensation, Commodification, And Disablement: How Law Has Dehumanized Laboring Bodies And Excluded Nonlaboring Humans, Karen M. Tani
All Faculty Scholarship
This essay reviews Nate Holdren's Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which explores the changes in legal imagination that accompanied the rise of workers' compensation programs. The essay foregrounds Holdren’s insights about disability. Injury Impoverished illustrates the meaning and material consequences that the law has given to work-related impairments over time and documents the naturalization of disability-based exclusion from the formal labor market. In the present day, with so many social benefits tied to employment, this exclusion is particularly troubling.